Mizuko Jizou
by RenkonNairu
Summary: Mai/Andy Inspired by their fight intros form KOF '99 and '01. There's a reason why Mai tortures Andy with those baby-illusions. -ONESHOT- R


Disclaimer: I don't own King of Fighters or related characters etr. All is the property of SNK and Neo Geo. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

Mizuko Jizou

Mai placed the small Jizou statue next to the other. It had been two years since she had commissioned the first and now here she was placing a second next to it. She cursed Andy silently as she lit an inscent for each. She knew that she really had no right to be angry with him and not with herself, she could have just as easily told him instead of keeping it secret but Andy was stubborn and if he wasn't yet willing to marry her a child wouldn't change that.

So back in '99 when she had first learned that she was pregnant she had, instead of telling him and forcing him into marriage, decided to abort the child and commission a statue of Jizou Bodhisattva (the guardian of unborn children) to guard the child's soul in the after life. She wasn't sure if a physical object had any real effect on the metaphysical world, but it did ease her guilt (a little).

She had gone to the King of Fighters tournament that year. She hadn't planned on publicly humiliating Andy, it had been just a spur of the moment thing. Just before their fight she had gotten the bright idea to scare him (or at least that's what she had told herself) it was more likely on some subconscious level she had wanted to tell him of the child that she had given up for him, of the sacrifice she had made for him.

It had been a well-constructed illusion as far as illusions went. Andy certainly thought it was real. And believable too, he had left the Shiranui dojo eleven months, almost a year, on one of his many training journeys before the KOF tournament. It would have been enough time for her to have carried and had a child with two months to get back into shape for a fighting competition. She had sculpted the illusion to resemble an infant and oh! the expression on his face when he saw it!

The perfect blend of shock and horror that each fought for dominance over Andy's features had been just what Mai needed to sooth her roiling guilt and anger. She had ended the illusion there, revealing baby to be nothing more than her fan disguised to look like a child and she had laughed behind it's paper folds, both at Andy's gullibility and in an attempt to hide her own vulnerability. She didn't want Andy to see her cry; that was something she would save until she was again alone at the dojo. Always alone whenever she was at the dojo…

He had retuned from that tournament very annoyed with her, she didn't care, it was good for him to suffer every now and again. She shouldn't have to be the only one in their relationship to carry burdens. He may have been annoyed with her, he may still have strongly refused to marry her, but that still hadn't stopped him from sleeping with her.

Sometimes, laying there in the night with Andy fast asleep next to her, she wondered why she let him back in. Not just back into her bed but why she ever even bothered letting him return to the Shiranui dojo at all. It wasn't like he spent much time there anyway. He would show up for a few weeks to train and when her instance that they get married got to much for him or she irritated him he would leave again, go train at the Yamada dojo with Master Jubei instead or go up into the mountains to train in isolation.

Maybe he really wasn't meant for marriage, if running away was his way of dealing with things.

But it wasn't his way of dealing at all; he faced things head on. After his father was murdered he spent ten years training to avenge his death. To commit to a goal like that and stay committed for ten whole years showed that he was obviously not afraid of a challenge, wasn't afraid to face things. If there were something that he couldn't handle then he would improve himself until he could handle it.

Maybe that was why she kept letting him come back. She kept wondering _'Maybe now he's ready. Maybe now he'll marry me.' _But he didn't, he never did. When he came back it was to train and improve his fighting skills. Every now and then he would accompany her out on a 'date' but that was more because he had become stir-crazy staying at the dojo all day, it was more for his own benefit than out of any desire to spend actual time with her.

Shortly after the King of Fighters tournament in 2000 he had left again, not even bothering to follow her back to Japan before disappearing. No, he had left her hotel room the morning after the tournament before she had woken (no note) but she was used to it by now, numb to it you might say. So she went back to Japan alone, crawled onto her futon alone and cried into her pillow alone.

And a few weeks after that she learned that she was pregnant again.

Mai picked up a few stones from the surrounding area and placed them in a small pile next to the new Jizou. It was believed that a stone offered in faith would shorten the time their child suffered in the underworld she certainly hoped so. Mai just couldn't stand the thought of her unborn children suffering in the afterlife because of her cowardice and selfishness.

She chanted the Jizou mantra silently a few times before offering a more personal prayer for her two children's souls and another one for her herself, for forgiveness of the decisions she had made. Maybe she had no right to ask for forgiveness but she did all the same. At least she cared enough to ask, enough to visit the statues and pray, to commission them for her children at all. She, at least, cared more about something that had never lived than it seemed Andy cared for her.

…

The next King of Fighters competition rolled around sooner than she had expected. KOF '01 was announced and before she even opened her invitation she knew that Andy would be going. She hadn't seen him in a little less than a year but she knew that he'd be there with his brother Terry and friend Joe, team Fatal Fury, the Lonely Wolves out on the prowl.

She scoffed. "'Lonely Wolf', indeed."

…

She hadn't expected to get so choked up when she saw him. She'd gone a year without seeing Andy before and had been fine, but this time for some reason when she saw him all her anger and sadness came bubbling back up to the surface and she had to turn her back to him to regain her composure. She could see him in her mind's eye, scratching his head in confusion; this wasn't her normal behavior around him. She found it a wonder that she could ever have behaved normally around him after '99, but she had done it then, she could do it now. But not without a little torture first. She wove another illusion for Andy.

A toddler this time, and a more articulate illusion then the first. She had a feeling Andy knew it was another illusion, for a second she thought that he'd gotten to smart to fall for it, then she set the child of the ground and let it walk towards him.

The expression on his face was priceless! His shoulders hunched over and his eyes bugged out of their sockets in shock. He honestly believed that he was looking at their child, the gullible fool!

While the look on his face was just to priceless for words she couldn't keep the illusion going for very long, not to mention they had a fight to get to. She snapped her fan shut and the phantom child disappeared in a puff of smoke. Her mind jumped to the comparison of snuffing out the original child's life so many months prior and she felt another wave of guilt wash over her.

"Ora, gambate." She said to Andy in an attempt to save face, hoping none of her private pain showed through.

To her own shock Andy offered no comment on this second baby-illusion, instead he punched himself in the face without remark and assumed his stance. That was fine, if he had nothing to say on the matter then neither did she. They would fight, one of them would win and then she would go back to Japan and this time when he followed she wouldn't let him back into the dojo. Two unwanted pregnancies was enough to make her learn, she didn't need a third.

…

It was as she was leaving that he finally showed up to talk. She hadn't seen him since their fight and she had assumed that he was either angry or embarrassed (or both) over her little prank, though she hardly considered acknowledging that they had had a child together a 'prank'.

She had just finished packing and had taken her duffle bag over her shoulder to exit the room. When she opened the door Andy was standing there, his fist raised as if he were about to knock but was now frozen in the motion. He still wore the while tunic and pants with the long sleeved undershirt and red sash she'd seen him in yesterday during the tournament. His expression was unreadable but she didn't really care, she wasn't in the mood to talk.

"I have a plane to catch, Andy." She said, trying to push past him.

He stopped her easily, one strong arm wrapping itself around her slim waist, his hand resting on the curve of her hip. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, to pull her close and ask her not to go, say that he'd been an idiot and a fool and that they should finally get married. That idea, however, vanished the second he opened him mouth.

"What in the Hell is wrong with you?"

"Excuse me?" She was a bit taken aback by his harsh word choice and coarse tone. Andy may be a negligent jerk, he may be clueless and a dead-beat but he had never used harsh language with her. If she ever did anything that bothered or annoyed him, he would simply just put some distance between the two of them, either by leaving to room or leaving the dojo entirely.

"This is the second time you've pulled that shit." He explained, referring to her illusion.

"'What the Hell's wrong with me'? What the Hell is wrong with you?" She shot back. It was a weak response but the only one she could think of at the moment. "We've been together –if you can even call it that- for how many years now? Yet you refuse to marry me, normal couples end-up married or broken-up after two or three! You're always so eager to sleep with me you refuse to marry me! I just don't understand you!"

"I'm easy to understand." He insisted, releasing his hold on her but continuing to block her path, backing her up until they were both back in her hotel room. He shut the door behind them. "I'm easy to understand. I seek the perfection of my fighting skills before I settle down, whenever and wherever that will be."

"You mean you wanna beat you brother for once and having a proper wife and family would hinder that goal." She translated. "You're selfish, I've always know that."

His eyebrow twitched in what she assumed was annoyance. "I may be selfish, but you're immature. How can you possibly hope to maintain a successful marriage when you're still just a spoiled child?"

Mai sputtered. Yes, she would admit that she could be immature at times, at _times_, not always. Andy, it seemed, was almost always putting his own interests ahead of hers. What right did he have to call her immature when his selfishness just proved his greater immaturity?

"What you pulled earlier…" He continued. "I bet you got a good laugh out of it, har har, torture Andy Bogard with another baby-scare. You hid it well, but I bet you were laughing your ass off in you mind. How immature can you be to pull something like that with an audience to witness and no regard or even consideration for my feelings in the matter."

"Oh, _your_ feelings." She dropped her duffle bag unceremoniously on the floor. Raising her self on her tiptoes she looked him right in the eye. "_Your_ feelings. Yes, how selfish and immature of me not to consider your feelings while I was crying alone in the dojo all those months ago. Crying because I had to abort a baby I actually wanted because _you_ weren't ready to be a husband, let alone a father! How selfish of me to suffer alone just so that you could continue your stupid training in hopes that you _might_ beat your precious big brother for once."

He stared at her in dumbfounded shock and confusion at the word 'baby', Mai didn't notice, tears stung her eyes as she continued. She wanted to turn away, to hide her face so that he couldn't see her hurt, but she didn't. She forced herself to look at him, to force him to see and understand.

"Do you have any idea how hard the decision was for me!? Not once, but twice I could have had a child, but twice I decided not to because there was no point if I couldn't have it with you and both times you were _gone_! It seems like whenever I need you you're not around. Well, that's just _fine_!"

She stepped back away form him, scooping up her bag.

"You're who you are, Andy and nothing can change that. I'm sorry I ever asked so much of you."

And with that she left. Out the door, down the hall, out of the hotel and into a cab, to the airport, on a plain and back to Japan.

…

She wasn't quite sure how it was even possible, but somehow Andy was already waiting for her at the Shiranui dojo when she arrived back home. Maybe he had rushed out after her and gotten in a faster cab and taken a shorter rout to the airport and gotten on a sooner flight, maybe he had learned so new magic technique that allowed him to jump through plot holes, maybe it didn't freakin' _matter_, at this point she was beyond caring. So he was waiting for her when she arrived, so what?

Mai didn't bother to offer a greeting as she past him to her front door. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back to face him.

"We need to talk." His voice was deadpan.

"'Bout what?" She shifted the weight of her duffle and crossed her arms defiantly over her chest.

Andy sighed, reached out a hand, took her duffle from her shoulder and placed it on the porch next to his own travel bag. He looked at her for a long moment after that, as if searching her face for the answer to a question he hadn't yet asked. Finally, he gave another sigh of exasperation and running a hand through his long blond hair said "Jesus Christ, Mai! You can't just drop a bomb on me like that and walk away!"

She waited for him to say more, when he didn't she replied, "Why, Andy, I'm surprised you even cared."

"Don't be like that, you know I care."

Mai remained tactfully silent. In all honesty she didn't really think he did but it was nice that he was at least making an effort to convince her otherwise. That small bit of effort showed her that while he may not care about _her_ exactly, he at least cared about what she wasto _him_. That was worth something, right?

"You _do _know I care… don't you?" He asked after her prolonged silence. She didn't bother to respond. "Shit, Mai!" He sank to sit on the porch step. "You don't even believe that I care. Do you really think so little of me?"

"It's been a rather hard concept to grasp these past few years." It was the most delicate way she could put it. It certainly sounded better than 'Don't stand there and lie so obviously you dead-beat bastard!'

"Mai, I…"

"Look, I don't want to hear it." She cut him off. "I just got back, I'm tired, I want a shower and a nap." She picked up her duffle and entered the dojo. As she was taking off her shoes he added. "But because you took the effort to at least try I won't call the cops on you for trespassing."

"'Trespassing'?" Andy echoed. "I live here!"

"No." She gave him her most deadly piercing look. "_I_ live here. You were my grandfather's apprentice but Ojisama is dead now. I've let you stay here from time to time because he liked you and for a while I liked you too. But you don't live here, Andy."

And with that she slammed the sliding door shut almost on his nose.

…

The next morning Mai woke feeling rested but not refreshed. It seemed that a cloud of depression was constantly surrounding her these days. _'Postpartum depression?'_ She wondered. But no, that couldn't be it. You couldn't get PD if you never gave birth, it was probably just guilt, guilt and sorrow. Even so, the living still had to go on living. She had been gone, off on the KOF tournament, for a while and the work at the dojo had surely piled up. She decided to start with something easy, like sweeping the courtyard.

Some time latter she was up and dressed for a day of cleaning and exiting the house, broom in hand.

She paused when she saw him there, still on the porch and fast asleep, his back propped up against the wall, one leg out stretched in front of him, the other bent at the knee and drawn up to his chest. Andy always looked so handsome when he was sleeping. It was almost a shame to have to wake him. But she nudged him awake all the same, kicking his foot lightly with her toe.

"Oi, squatter-kun, you can't sleep here."

He moaned something in English that sounded suspiciously like 'five more minuets, Terry' and attempted to roll over but only succeeded in lousing the wall's support and bashing his shoulder into the ground.

"Ow!"

She just shook her head at his antics, she remembered him doing stupid things like that all the time back when they were younger. Back when he was still training under her grandfather in the Kopou-ken style, back when they were training partners, before they had grown up, before life had gotten complicated. She hadn't seen him act the fool in a very long time; it was almost refreshing in a melancholy 'the past is gone' sort of way.

"Gah! I've never seen you look sad when you smile." He commented, massaging his shoulder where it had collided with the hard wood of the porch.

She really didn't feel like explaining her observation to him. Instead she asked, "Did spend the whole night out here?"

"No." He answered. "Not the whole night. I jogged down to the convenience store at some point to get some instant natto and a red bean bun."

Mai regarded him for a moment. Had he really slept the whole night out on the porch just because she wouldn't let him in the house? Well, sleeping outside was probably no big deal for him, he slept outdoors all the time when he was off on his training journeys, a wooden porch was probably no different than sleeping under the stars in the mountains. She had no obligation to feel sympathy for him. He could have easily called Higashi and stayed over at his apartment in Tokyo. It was his own fault he slept out in the cold, he had a choice.

'_But he wanted to stay close to you.'_ Said a little voice that sounded suspiciously like the part of her that still loved him.

She shoved that part back down, suppressed it under the anger and sorrow that had been building over the past three years. It was her infatuation with Andy that caused all the pain she'd suffered so much so recently. Nothing good could ever come from listening to that part of her. She should learn from her mistakes and move on.

"Mai," he looked at her with eyes that were to calm and tender to belong to him. It was like he had changed between last night and this morning, he had changed or had come to some sort of a decision that she was not privy to. "Can I come in?" He was so meek when he asked that it was almost cute.

"No."

She strolled off the porch and into the courtyard proper. She hadn't bothered to notice yesterday but the place was littered with dry brown and yellow ginko leaves. They coved almost every inch of the white stone yard and crunched underfoot. She chose the corner farthest possible from where Andy stood and began her task.

He watched her for a time before he sighed and then disappeared behind the main house. She could hear him shuffling things around in the equipment shed that was back there before he reemerged carrying a second broom in hand. He chose the corner opposite from her, respecting her desire for space and began clearing his own section of the yard.

Inevitably, they met in the middle, sweeping their respective piles into one massive mountain of dead leaves. She gazed at it intently if for no other reason that just to avoid meeting his eyes. There was something in his air and his stance that told her he wanted desperately to ask a question and that it would be a question she wouldn't want to answer, or at least not think about the answer to.

"Wanna set it on fire and roast sweet potatoes over it like we used to?" Andy asked, attempting to dispel the feeling of brooding that had clung to her since she'd woken that morning. It wasn't what he'd wanted to say but at least it had broken the awkward silence between them.

"You know the moment we do, the wind will blow every burning leaf onto my roof."

"Murphy's Law." He shrugged with a flimsy smile. "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong."

She didn't know why but his feeble attempts to appease or cheer her were grating on her nerves. She hadn't asked him to help with the yard and she didn't need suggestions on how to deal with the leftovers. But if he was so insistent on helping her, then he could finish this while she did something else, something away from the front courtyard, away from him.

She passed him her broom. "Do as you please." And strode back into the house.

…

She was going over the mail that had piled up when he joined her for a second time. This time extending a fire roasted sweet potato on a stick to her.

"The outside's a little burnt." He apologized. "But once you get under that first layer its still as good as always."

"I'm not hungry."

He seemed to accept the flimsy excuse without question but didn't leave. Instead he sat down on the floor next to her. He offered no comment, no announcement of his intent; he just sat in silent objectivity.

They remained like that for a time. Her going over bills and correspondences, him silently munching on the sweet potato he had originally offered to her. As the stack of papers grew smaller and smaller she started taking more and more time on each, reading and re-reading each page so as to stall the inevitable moment when she would no longer have an excuse to ignore him, no longer have an excuse to put off when he would once again bring up the one subject she least wanted to talk about.

Mai found herself wondering if she could convince him to go train somewhere outside like he usually did whenever he was staying at the dojo. But something told her that that wouldn't be happening this time. Sometimes it seemed like she didn't know him at all, but if she knew one thing, it was that if he had any intention of training he would have already been out there hours ago.

"You know, you've been staring at that time-share for the past half hour. Don't tell me you're actually considering it."

Truth be told, she had been completely oblivious to the fact that the paper she now held in her hands _was_ a time-share. To her it had just been a prop to perpetuate her excuse not to talk with him. But it seemed that she'd been found out.

"Why are you here?" Prolonging the inevitable was stupid. If she ever wanted him to leave her alone again she would have to face whatever conversation he felt they needed to have and be done with it.

"To be with you." He answered so matter-of-factly. "Or more accurately: to be here _for_ you."

"You're a little late."

"Isn't late better then never at all?"

"'Never at all'!" She bolted to her feet suddenly livid. "Andy, sometimes late and never at all are the same damn thing! You wanna talk about late! Come with me!" She grabbed his wrist hard enough to bruise and hauled him to his feet. "I'll show you 'late' and 'never'!" And she dragged him all the way out of the dojo to the foot of a narrow path that led up into the mountains behind.

The trail, Andy knew continued for miles, but Mai dragged him only a few feet into the trees before leaving the trail and cutting to the left. She led him for a few minuets more before stopping suddenly and releasing his wrist.

"Here's your 'late' and 'never'!" She said.

That was when he first noticed the two small Mizuko Jizou statues they now stood before. Each one came up no higher than his knees and each had a small pile of stones next to it, and the remnants of several burned incents in front of them. Statues erected to protect the souls of dead children in the afterlife.

"They will _never _live because you were _late _sorting out your feelings!"

"Mai… I…" His voice cracked, he didn't really know what to say. "I didn't know, you never told me. I didn't…" Words failed him so he just shut-up.

"Course you didn't know." Her tone was scathing. "You weren't even around _to_ know. Not once, Andy, not once but twice I was pregnant and you were no where to be found."

"I'm here now." He whispered knowing it wouldn't help, knowing it wouldn't ease her suffering, knowing it wasn't the right thing to say. He didn't know what the right thing was.

"Now doesn't matter."

He knew that, knew that no matter what he said or did now that nothing could bring Mai's children back, their children… _his_ children. Something seemed to squeeze his heart at that realization. Of course they were his, he'd known that the moment Mai had so indelicately confessed to him, but there was a difference between knowing a fact and _knowing_ a truth.

Grief… that was what contracted around his heart right now. Grief over the deaths of his children before they even had a chance at life and guilt, guilt over not being there for Mai when she needed him. Maybe if he had she never would have…

But what's done was done and cannot be undone. He could not help his children, but he could help Mai. She didn't have to struggle alone anymore.

"What do you want?" He asked.

"From you? Nothing." She knelt before the Jizou and began a new pile of stones. "Nothing anymore. I've stopped expecting things from you. You've never done anything for me before, why should you start now?"

Andy sighed in exasperation; he was part of the problem, he knew that; she probably didn't trust him enough to open up. The old Mai wouldn't have had any inhibitions over confiding in him. He remembered how she had broken down after Master Honzo's funeral and cried into his shirt until all she could do was hiccup.

He had held her then, he hadn't offered her any words of comfort because (like right now) he didn't know the right ones. So he had held her while she cried and when she was done she thanked him for his support and apologized for her out burst. And then she said the oddest thing; it stuck out in his memory because it was so unexpected, especially coming from her, whom he had (until then) thought to be a thoughtless ditz.

She had simply told him that it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she had him to cry on when her grandfather died, but he had had no one to cry on or to support him when his father had died. That statement had thumbed a cord in him and he suddenly understood Mai better in that moment then he ever had before and he promised himself to be her pillar of strength and support her when her own will crumbled. But he had ended up doing the exact opposite, he had caused her pain and now he had to work doubly as hard to ease it.

He watched her pile stones around the Jizou. If he was remembering his mythology correctly children who die prematurely are sent to the river of souls in purgatory, where they pray for Buddha's compassion by building small stone towers, piling stone upon stone, and it was believed that a stone offered to the statue in faith would shorten the time their child suffered in the underworld. What else did the Jizou legend say?

Andy removed his red sash and knelt before the older looking of the two statues. He wrapped the material loosely around the idol's neck twice then let the remaining ends hang down the front. The final effect was that of a bright red scarf that was one size to big.

"What're you…" Mai began.

"Since Jizo is the guardian of dead children," he began, "it stands to reason that if we dress the statues, Jizo Bodhisattva will specially protect our children. If I'm remembering my mythology right." He glanced sideways at her, hoping to gauge her reaction. Did he do the right thing, or did he just piss her off more by presuming to lecture her on her own culture?

For one fleeting moment he feared that he'd f---ed-up royally when her eyes began to water. If all he'd accomplished was to making her cry he would've been better off leaving her alone. But then the she pounced on him, not violently (although he was knocked back on his ass), just pounced on him and began sobbing into his chest. He put his arms around her and just held her while she cried, just as he had done when Master Hanzo has passed. If that was what she needed then that was what he'd do for her.

When her sobs regressed into hiccups he pulled away just enough to look at her. "Mai, I…" He began, unsure of himself. "I was nine when my dad died."

"I know." She said wiping her face.

He nodded. "And before that Terry and I were alone. The foster system in America sucks, just so you know. They were always moving us form one family to another, sometimes we got to stay together but allot of the time we were separated. It seemed like every time we got to know a family, every time we started thinking 'hey, I could live here' we were moving again."

He shut his eyes as if doing so could keep out the painful memories. "They'd give us trash bags to put our stuff in, big black plastic garbage bags as if that's all we were, nothing but garbage being shifted from one dump to the other. But then something great happened. Terry and I met Jeffry Bogard, I remember thinking how cool he was. He adopted Terry and I and gave us his name and for a few years I was happy. But then he died, murdered right in front of Terry and me."

He looked back down at her. "I know you think I'm selfish and negligent and maybe I am, but I'm just so tired of the people I love leaving me, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, I'm sorry I try to distance myself from you. I just… I guess I was trying to keep myself from caring about you to much because I knew that if I cared I could be hurt and I've been hurt enough."

He tightened his arms around her slight frame. "But I ended up hurting you in the process and that is unforgivable. I'm sorry I was an idiot, I'm sorry I was completely oblivious to your pain, I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner. But I'm here now; I'm here for _you_ now. I may be a bit late, but I'm here."

Mai buried her face back in the front of his white tunic. She had no more tears to cry so she hiccupped into the fabric until she could finally form words. "Just be with me." She said. "You don't have to marry me if you don't want to, I stopped caring about that a while ago. Just stay with me, train here like you used to, don't go away."

"I won't." He promised. "I'm here."

… …


End file.
